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FIFA, players’ union agree Suarez needs help

Graham Dunbar
Published 12:40 a.m. ET June 28, 2014

Luis Suarez of Uruguay and Giorgio Chiellini of Italy react after a clash during the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil Group D match between Italy and Uruguay at Estadio das Dunas on Wednesday in Natal, Brazil.
(Photo:
Matthias Hangst/Getty Images
)

RIO DE JANEIRO – The players’ union and football’s governing body agree on one thing in the wake of the heavy ban imposed on Luis Suarez for his third biting incident: the Uruguay and Liverpool striker needs help.

Suarez returned to Montevideo early Friday, arriving too late to see the president of Uruguay and hundreds of fans who had gathered the previous night to give him a hero’s welcome despite his World Cup banishment.

In Rio de Janeiro, FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke said a third biting incident in Suarez’s career was “unacceptable.”

“I think he should find a way to stop doing it – he should go through a treatment,” Valcke told reporters at Maracana Stadium, where Uruguay plays Colombia in a Round-of-16 match on Saturday.

The players’ union, FIFPro, came to the same conclusion but from a more sympathetic approach.

FIFPro said the FIFA disciplinary panel’s ban for Suarez of nine Uruguay matches and four months from all football “infringes his right to work” and doesn’t offer him the treatment he needs.

“Luis Suarez should receive all the support he needs to deal with any off-field issues he may be experiencing at this time,” the union said, adding that “treatment must be a part of any sanction.”

Neither Valcke nor FIFPro specified if the treatment should include anger management therapy or counselling.

From Italy, Suarez also received support from his latest victim, Giorgio Chiellini, who described the sanction as excessive.

It was a view shared on Friday by Uruguay coach Oscar Tabarez, who has quit his role in FIFA’s strategic committee in protest at the length of the ban.

Tabarez blamed English-speaking media for creating pressure on the FIFA disciplinary panel to punish Suarez and said that FIFA seems to have “values very different from those that I have.”

In his first public comments on the controversy, FIFA President Sepp Blatter declined to discuss the length of the ban but condemned Suarez’s action.

“It is not fair what he has done,” Blatter in a video interview on FIFA’s website, which was recorded Friday before Tabarez spoke.

Suarez bit Chiellini’s left shoulder during Uruguay’s 1-0 win over Italy at Natal on Tuesday.